


eminence front

by alamorn



Category: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Genre: F/F, Ghosts, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 04:09:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15622218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: It happened slowly, inevitably, like the tide coming in or the Masquerade conquering.The only thing Baru can see on the right side is Tain Hu.





	eminence front

It happened slowly, inevitably, like the tide coming in or the Masquerade conquering. It started with flashes, hints, warm brown and vivid red. When it was done, Baru could not remember how it had been before — no, that was a lie. But it was hard to reconcile _presence_ with _absence_ , and it was hard to want to. She had thought she had done the hardest calculus, had made the hardest bargains, had excised what remained of her vulnerabilities, her softnesses.

Tain Hu, always on her right, made that a lie. She did not speak at first, that ghost in Baru’s blind spot. The perfect woman, Baru thought coldly. Asserting her personhood, but not too loudly. A constant reminder of Baru’s weaknesses and strengths in one well-muscled form.

She sacrificed Tain Hu for advantage, and here Tain Hu was to give it to her. The ghost did not speak, but she smiled, she pointed, she lounged. She was the only thing Baru could see past the blade of her nose.

She didn’t speak to Tain Hu. Words could be overheard, and to speak to nothing would be more dangerous than open sedition. Neither did she write, or turn, or smile. Baru was nothing if not careful, and her mathematics included the dead, if not like this.

It was months before Tain Hu spoke. She was braced over something Baru could not see. When Baru turned her head, Tain Hu disappeared, and a chair holding Itinerant, bent over a map, appeared in her place. Baru turned back to the window, saw Tain Hu draw a finger down what must be the map.

“He is sending you to your death,” Tain Hu said. “But you knew that.”

Itinerant spoke, and Baru hummed, half to him, half to Tain Hu. Itinerant has been sending her to her death since she was a child. She would not be his savant if she could not slip the hangman’s noose. The Masquerade believed in merit, and merit lay in this:

Survival, at all costs.

Baru listened to Tain Hu because Tain Hu had understood the game she was playing, had understood it to the last and taken the only move she had left. Tain Hu had not survived, and thus, to the Empire, she had no merit. But Baru was not the Empire, and she did not have to play their games here, in the empty space that Tain Hu moved in.

Her room in the heart of Falcrest had large windows and thick white walls. They were reassurance and threat both. _No spies at the door, no spyholes, but as you see us, we see you_. It made them nervous, that she had killed Tain Hu. She was the serpent at their bosom, and they had not yet decided if she was venomous or not.

The windows allowed light to fall across her bed early in the morning. It woke her, if she’d slept, a gentler waking than she deserved. She liked to turn her head, so Tain Hu appeared and disappeared, gilded with early morning light, red as dawn, red as blood.

As always, Baru felt the words in her throat, misshapen and sharp on the back of her tongue. _I’m sorry. I love you. I will make it all worth it._ As always, she swallowed them down.

Tain Hu turned and smiled, her teeth pink and bloody with the dawn light.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm absolutely not smart enough to write fic for this book but boy did I love this idea!


End file.
